District 58 took its eyes off ball with asphalt contract
Can someone please explain to me why Downers Grove Grade School District 58 hired Orange Crush to replace the asphalt playgrounds at Whittier School?

Orange Crush, aka Palumbo Brothers, is banned forever by the U.S. Department of Transportation for fraudulent work and billing on highway projects — the first such organization to be given a permanent ban by the department. They were also fined $15 million. The state, the Illinois Tollway Authority and many counties and municipalities also enforce the ban. Why would convicted criminals be given work by District 58?

Could it be that the constant distraction by a board member who can’t seem to agree on anything caused the board as a whole to take their eye off the important business of monitoring the operations of the district? Maybe some of those legal fees would be better spent monitoring the contracts that District 58 signs.

Who would have thought that the tollway has higher ethical standards than Downers Grove Grade School District 58?

John Miller, Downers Grove

Distinguish between healthcare, health insurance fields
This month has been filled with noise regarding President Obama’s proposal to overhaul the American health care system.

I believe wholeheartedly that the health insurance industry in this country is a disaster. It is very important to distinguish between health care — what we receive when we visit doctors, hospitals, and clinics — and the health insurance industry.

It could not be more clear that insurance companies are utilizing our capitalist system to turn profits, and it can certainly be argued that this is entirely appropriate, given the system as it stands. There are no doubt injustices that occur, such as insurance companies dropping members via technicalities as soon as they require major coverage.

However, the majority of the time the system runs the way it is designed to run: businesses make money by charging more for premiums than they pay out in claims. The contradiction lies in the fact that doctors and hospitals are compensated based on the amount of care they provide, rather than the degree of health they encourage.

Thus, there is a dysfunctional relationship between the health care industry and the health insurance industry. This does not even consider the legal aspects of malpractice insurance and exorbitant penalties levied against doctors and providers. President Obama wants to better regulate health care as a whole, which is entirely reasonable.

Just as auto manufacturers have an incentive to see gas prices kept low, health insurance companies should cooperate with health care providers to prevent illness rather than rewarding over-treatment. Part of his proposal is to do just that: to give incentives to doctors and providers to bring their patients into healthier lifestyles altogether.

Such a simple solution would go a long way toward rectifying the tension between providers and insurance, which continues to increase the cost to us members.

Jonathan Tripple, Downers Grove

Democrats have ruined United States of America
Democrats want the federal government to get more involved in health care, the auto industry and lord knows what else. We shouldn’t be surprised. They have a long history of attempting social engineering.

Lest we forget, here are some of the consequences of the Democrats’ past efforts at social engineering; here are some of the consequences of their past efforts to impose liberal, extreme, morally relativistic values on this society:

A high divorce rate, a high out-of-wedlock birth rate, a high teen suicide rate, a high teen drug use rate, a high child abuse rate, more than 49 million abortions since 1973, a sexual revolution which has normalized promiscuity (sexual exploitation) and given rise to an epidemic of sexually transmitted diseases, the intellectual debasement of education and culture, censorship in the media and higher education, fatherless homes and the feminization of poverty, children giving birth to children, gang-banging children murdering children, and the ruination of the black nuclear family.

With this track record, do we really want to turn over more control of our lives to those currently running this federal government? Do they really reflect your values?

Wayne Lela, Woodridge